In yesterday’s Times-Standard, failed city council candidate George Clark articulates some of the genius that sent his campaign straight down the ol’ crapper last fall.

A few highlights:

If 75 percent of residents cannot afford home ownership, give them no jobs. That will help.

If the Balloon Track is “essential for growth that actually begins contributing to the local economy,” let it lay vacant and polluted for several decades while you all sit around listening to yourselves talk. Also very helpful.

If “rural cities are limiting infrastructure costs and improving tax bases by expanding the compact lifestyles of their Old Towns to meet the explosion of single households, an aging population, and skyrocketing poverty and foreclosure rates”–well, that’s a nice use of buzz words, friend, but it doesn’t actually mean anything. At all. Really.

And finally, if you run for office and rack up only a couple hundred votes despite the desperate attempts of your handlers and the wads of cash Bill Pierson throws at you, have someone write a thousand words of laughably stupid shit to run in a newspaper under your name.

We keep coming back to one central issue: Lot of people can and do run around talking about their hopes and dreams for the city of Eureka. But all these years later, George, Bonnie, Larry, Pete, Bill, Ken and all their friends whose lives and livelihoods revolve around obstructing productive use of that land have done not one thing to clean it up, have articulated not one plausible plan for the site, and have raised not one dollar to put their plans into action.

All their money, time and attention has gone into making sure no one else does either.

Brace yourselves, Eurekans, because word from the prog pond is that a certain former city councilman is planning to do us the great favor of running for mayor of our fair city.

Yippee kai yay and shit, yes?

Because when we look at the challenges facing Eureka, the first thought that springs to mind is, you know, what we need is the manager of a marijuana dispensary in Arcata to get in here and really turn things around for us.

The space shuttle Discovery blew up. Chernobyl melted down. Halley’s Comet was a major bust, and the Bears beat the living crap out of our Patriots in Super Bowl XX. Closer to home, something called MAXXAM purchased the Pacific Lumber Company, and Bonnie Neely was elected Fourth District Supervisor.

Now PALCO is gone, of course, as is the Soviet Union. The shuttle program isn’t far behind. Somehow the poor Bears ended up with that jackass Cutler, and then there’s the Patriots of which WE SHALL NOT SPEAK.

Which brings us to the Bon Bon.

In the 23 years that she’s been feeding at the electorate’s trough, she has valiantly campaigned against lousy jobs and low wages and given us instead no jobs and no wages.

She helped defeat one Big Box on the Balloon Track, in order to preserve the waterfront for light industrial and harbor-based business. In its place she has given us no industry and no business.

She fought a partial cleanup of the property, and in 23 years there has been no cleanup of any property.

In 1999, she thanked the voters of Eureka for saying no to Walmart because “they had a vision for a better project.” In the 10 years since, she has supported no vision for any project.

She called the previous proposal for the Balloon Track “the laziest, most uncreative use for the coast” she’d ever seen, but has since provided nothing in the way of viable alternatives.

In fact, Neely’s defining quality through these many years has been her startling proficiency at making sure things don’t get done.

Hank Sims, one of the north coast’s premier wordsmiths, got his ass verbally handed to him Thursday by Eureka City Councilman Jeff Leonard, a man not universally known for his powers of expression.

Better still, the little Jeffster needed fewer than 200 words to dismantle Hank’s long-winded lamentation about how “it’s something close to insane” to think a majority of city councilmembers might share informed views of the Marina Center’s Environmental Impact Report within a couple of weeks, instead of dragging this shindig out until, say, Jesus comes back.

Hank went so far as to warn the city that it “may live to regret” not allowing a month or more to study all of the “pages and pages of detailed legal and scientific analysis” prepared by all of those numerous agencies.

Why the melodramatic flourishes? Because, Hank argued, the development project is almost certain to end up in court, and the city better be sure enough of its position to justify shelling out major coin to defend it.

The threat of litigation aside–the Town Dandy urbanely observed that the council’s “great haste in this matter has an odd smell.”

Hank – Here are a few clarifications regarding the process to help address your concerns:

The Draft EIR was published November 2008. 179 written comments were received, including comments from 17 different agencies. 850 pages of total comments.

The comment period closed January, 2009. The City and the consultants paid to develop the EIR have been weighing the objections and responding to the comments for the past 10 months.

The Final EIR includes a 22 page Errata section. This section reviews all of the changes made to the Draft EIR as a result of the comments received.

Any lawsuits filed over the EIR or the project will be the responsibility of project applicant – not the City of Eureka. Standard practice for California cities in today’s litigious society is to require legal indemnification at the start of the project.

Our next meeting on October 20th will kickoff public comment on the Final EIR. There is no action item on the Agenda.

Hope that info helps provide some extra clarity – see you on the 20th!

Two Eureka city councilmembers spoke movingly Tuesday night about their lifelong struggles with literacy, prompting an emotional council to quickly approve hiring tutors to teach them reading, phonics and other basic life skills.

“Admitting you’re stupid is the first step to getting help,” Mayor Virginia Bass said, blinking back tears as she hugged Councilwoman Linda Atkins in what the mayor later described as a “totally hetero way.”

The literacy issue came up as the council received the Marina Center Environmental Impact Report, prompting both Larry Glass and Atkins to immediately admit they would not be able to read it within any normal period of time.

“Of course we can both piece letters together to form words,” Atkins explained later. “We’re what’s called functionally illiterate, which means we can read and write, but our skills are inadequate to meet the demands of our everyday lives.”

For example, Atkins said, their jobs as councilmembers require them to read documents and reports–“because how can we disagree with them if we don’t know what they say?” But fortunately, she added, she and Glass have both sharpened their verbal skills somewhat by sending a non-stop stream of talking points to the Humboldt Herald.

Glass thought he might be able to muddle through some of the report in two weeks, although he said he would need more time to “digest” its contents. Atkins asked for four weeks to read the document, and said even that wouldn’t be enough.

“It’s so brave of them to speak publicly about their disability,” Bass said. “Sadly, dumb is incurable, but with professional help maybe they can take the edge off a bit.”

When Glass was asked if he thought there was even a remote chance reading the EIR would change his mind about the Marina Center project, he looked around for black Escalades, then laughed nervously and scratched his balls.

“Like fuck,” he said, lowering his voice. “We’re gonna vote no on this and every fucking other thing associated with all this Marina Center shit, but we wanna do so in such a prolonged and dramatic way that Bill Pierson will feel like he got his money’s worth from us.”

Bass tried to hug Glass too, but he thought she was pushing him and called the police.

Boring? Not a bit! In fact, it’s the best kind of political theater: Rich, fat slumlords pitted against vulnerable (but wholesome!) poor people, who with the city’s wise and beneficent assistance resolve their differences and live happily ever after in upgraded housing stock and quiet, tree-lined communities, possibly with Jesus.

But first things first! Let’s get on down to City Hall and register our rentals!! It’s like sex offender registry, only serious. Really! Have you ever known a child molester out of compliance to be charged up to $1,000 a day? Neither have we, but that’s what grandma would be looking at if she failed to register the other half of her duplex within 30 days.

So now it’s inspection time!! Yay! The ordinance gives the city the authority to enter any rental unit in response to any complaint, real or fabricated, by any person, connected to the property or otherwise, including staff, total strangers, and your ex-wife’s half-brother in Fortuna.

If you’re not home when the inspector arrives? No worries! They can get a warrant and break down your door.

Should any problems be found inside inspectors can order repairs to be completed within as little as 48 hours, and can then re-inspect afterward (“can” being literal here, as the city explicitly gives itself the right, after breaking into your house, to not follow up on their repair orders. They’re busy people, you know).

In some cases you may be able to get an extension on the repairs, if staff feel like granting one. But in other cases you cannot, regardless of the availability of funds, qualified repair people, or materials in stock at Pierson’s.

Failure to comply with the inspector’s schedule will subject you to fines of up to $1,000 per day per repair. And if you don’t pay all those fines, fees and penalties within 60 days, the city will put a lien against your property, even though obviously it’s a piece of shit and who would want to live there, or you wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.

Well fuck-howdy, have we left anything out?

Oh—just this little gem under section 150.030.024 Right of Entry: “Whenever it is necessary to make an inspection to enforce any of the provisions of or perform any duty imposed by this chapter or other applicable law, or whenever the City has reasonable cause to believe that there exists in any residential rental property any violation of the provisions of this sub-chapter or other applicable building, zoning, housing, fire, nuisance, health, safety or related laws or regulations, the City is hereby authorized to send an inspector to enter the premises at any reasonable time and to inspect it and perform any duty imposed upon the City or authorized representative by this chapter or other applicable law.”

Translation, please? Remember how it was determined code enforcement officers didn’t actually have legal justification to take armed, pot-spotting Sheriff’s deputies with them on building inspections? Well, friends, that paragraph right there is exactly the authority they lacked.

We hope the Eureka City Council will see this compendium of rights violations for what it is. Good intentions are laudable, but they’re no excuse for policy as bad as this.

St. Joe CEO Joe Mark confirmed Thursday that inside the small steel box, found by construction crews, were invoices showing disputed and excessive charges, along with clear evidence of misapplied payments dating back to the mid-20th Century.

Finding the artifacts, Mark said, was a “stroke of luck” that left several construction company employees temporarily paralyzed on their left side.

By Friday morning, the workers had been treated, released, billed six times for the same procedure and turned over to a collection agency.